Originally Posted by detbuch
I feel stupid in actually answering a stupid question. But, what the hell, I'll venture into the unreal world of pointless questions which seem to be concocted out of the thin airiness of what has the slimmest appearance of thought--yes. I do live in reality. I also have foresight and imagination. I am creative, as well, in various ways. I'm an all-around good guy, but am capable of doing some nasty, vindictive or selfish things. You might say that I'm a well-rounded human being who has experienced the vast array and spectrum of natural and unnatural vicissitudes which await us in our brief interlude of existence.
As for that portion which lies in the realm of what we refer to as reality, when it has not been tinged with some imagination, creative or reflexive, for the most part, it has for me been functional, mundane, slightly or greatly boring, sometimes pleasant and sometimes frightening, harsh, or painful.
Which, I suppose, is why I despise socialism. It is the essence of boredom. It is the casting of the human soul into the dungeon of a quotidian, standard, average, common, slavishly regulated life. It claims to be the ultimate system of life in reality. But I find it to be the nightmarish dream of opinionated idiots.
Reality isn't everything. But it serves its purpose. And yes, I do "live in" its realms from time to time. Not as much as in the middle of my life when I was more active in getting and spending, more intensely desiring and procuring "real" things.
I am thankful for having been given the chance in my childhood to dream, to imagine, to create fictitious empires in my head, to play. And in my latter years I often return to childish imaginations and play. My life has had its glut of reality.
In that "real" space of living, I have had the opportunity to meet some people whom I have admired for their ability to get to the nut of what is "real." One that I remember most was an intellectually limited (retarded seems too cruel a word to define him) young man who weekly came to the reference section of the library asking to use a certain biographical dictionary, a pencil, and some note cards. He would, in the scholarly demeanor of a medieval student, sit at a desk, and open to the last page that he had previously read (he did his research in alphabetical order), and he would copy the next name onto the top of the card, and beneath that he would note "born" and "died." After each word, he would insert the date.
He was compiling the basic reality of the lives of famous people--the fact that they were born and that they died and when. Everything in between was not essential. Just stuff which people of greater imaginative ability considered "real," but for someone who was attuned to only physical presence, not ideology or even fantasy, the great endeavors and accomplishments described as such were just words not attached to a real thing. The only "reality" was the people's existence and disappearance.
What's your point? Do you imagine you have one? "Really"?
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